Simply Abu Dhabi XXVII

2 0 6 S I M P LY A B U DH A B I T he challenge was on, but it was a dare I doubt any other car manufacturer would have the guts to offer. From behind the wheel of the stationary, quad- turbocharged, 16-cylinder, 8-litre Bugatti Chiron, one of just 500 that will ever exist and good for 420km/h, I sat facing a long, empty and straight road. The guy sitting beside me knows a thing or two about going fast. Andy Wallace won the Le Mans 24-Hour race in 1988 driving the TWR Silk Cut Jaguar, was an F1 test driver and claimed the British F3 Championship the same year he won the Macau Grand Prix. He was strategically planted next to me to keep Bugatti’s insurance premium for this somewhere within reason. “Believe me, you think you’ve got the mettle to wring its neck? I guarantee you’ll get scared and back off before you’re anywhere near that corner,” Wallace tempted, finger pointing into the sun. As I was always the kid who had to touch the hot plate only because my big brothers told me not to, I planted my right foot as hard as I could and aimed for that far off, right-hand bend about a kilometre down the road. To prove what an even bigger idiot I am, it wasn’t good enough for me to just jump on the loud pedal of a car valued at AED9.4 million. No, I had to engage its launch control just so that all of its 1500bhp would feel my wrath. First, the revs built up with my right foot on the floor before I slipped my left foot off the brake pedal and it almost literally launched off the mark with near 100% traction thanks to its all-wheel drive sending chunks of power to the front wheels to stop 1600Nm of torque from frying the rears into oblivion. Instantly, my head planted itself into the headrest and there it stayed as we passed 100km/h in 2.5 seconds and then 200km/h just four seconds later. Still charging as hard as a Lamborghini Aventador in second gear, it was only at this point that I noticed a shortness of breath due to the compression on my chest from the G-forces it generated in full attack mode. The needle climbed past the 12 o’clock position which initially seemed a bit underwhelming until I realised it’s a 500km/h-calibrated speedo. Still hauling like a space shuttle on afterburners, the speedo steered to the two o’clock position, well past 300kmh, with two of its seven DSG gears to go. My brain was constantly re-calculating the rapid closing distance to the corner ahead but it was coming at me faster than I could compute, while anything aside from the straight ahead vision had become a blurred tube of green and blue smudges in my peripherals. If I were a fighter pilot trying to correct a wounded jet heading for the ocean, it would be at this point I would have pulled the ejector seat. With the corner fast approaching, I jumped on the brakes to wash off as much speed as I could to bring it down from its 320+km/h blast, back to 70km/h in time to take the bend. Bugatti Chiron First Drive By Damien Reid